NEW HAVEN — Seven pedestrians have been killed by motor vehicles so far this year, and more needs to be done to improve traffic safety, police and city officials were told Tuesday evening.

The Board of Alders’ Public Safety Committee held a public hearing on the issue because of reports of increasing crashes involving pedestrians and cyclists, and a perception by some alders that the process involved in making the streets safer is not apparent to residents. Much of the discussion at the meeting was between the committee and city administrators about whether the Complete Streets program, passed in 2010, has been as effective as possible in slowing traffic and improving safety.

There were also calls for better police enforcement of traffic laws, especially against drivers who speed and run red lights. “This is an epidemic,” and it’s a national problem, said Aaron Goode, a Wooster Square neighborhood resident and activist. “Nearly 6,000 American pedestrians lost their lives last year,” he said, calling those and pedestrian fatalities “senseless, preventable deaths” that also lower the quality of life in the city.

“To address it we need a full-court press” to raise driver and pedestrian awareness, as well as “law enforcement at both the police and prosecutorial level.” He also called for traffic cameras that photograph cars running through red lights, which are illegal in Connecticut.

As one of “a few egregious examples … where lax enforcement is creating a permissive environment,” Goode cited the case of Melissa Tancredi, who was standing on the sidewalk at South Frontage Road and York Street on Jan. 17, 2017, when Agnese Izzo of Hamden drove straight on a left-turn lane and fatally struck her.

Lt. Rose Dell said Izzo was “charged with felony misconduct with a motor vehicle and she pled down to negligent homicide.” Izzo, who police could not prove was distracted or impaired by alcohol or drugs, was sentenced to six months in prison, suspended after five.

Alder Abigail Roth, D-7, who with Alders Steven Winter, D-21, and Richard Furlow, D-27, had called for the hearing, said there are plans to install bollards at the intersection, which is often crowded with people walking to and from Yale New Haven Hospital.

Dell named the roadways and intersections where the seven pedestrian fatalities have occurred this year, several on Foxon Boulevard and Middletown Avenue, which city Engineer Giovanni Zinn pointed out are state road.

Police Lt. Wayne Bullock, deputy commander of the Patrol Division, gave the alders statistics on traffic accidents through Oct. 1, including 133 collisions involving pedestrians and 33 with cyclists. Dell, Westville district manager, said of the collisions with pedestrians, “32.5 percent of the crashes were at intersections and the most common type were four-way intersections.”

Bullock’s data included one cyclist seriously injured (there were no cycling fatalities) and 14 pedestrians seriously hurt. To increase enforcement, he said, “We’ve increased the numbers of our traffic unit this year by five — they’re being trained right now.” He said they will be put on the late afternoon and evening shift.

“I got really interested in this issue working on Complete Streets petitions with people in my ward,” Winter said. “I think that the city is doing a lot. Everybody is talking about the painting and bollards that went in at the Dixwell rotary.”

The intersection of Dixwell and Shelton avenues and Munson Street was one of six “Safe Routes for All” demonstration projects that used paint and other temporary devices to make the areas safer for pedestrians.

But Winter questioned whether there could be a better system to address requests for traffic-calming measures in the Complete Streets program. “On every block, people say ‘people fly down my street,’ ” he said.

Zinn and Doug Hausladen, director of the city Department of Transportation, Traffic and Parking, said they confer regularly about how to incorporate safety measures and use crash data, which the University of Connecticut posts at ctcrash.uconn.edu, to determine the most important areas to address.

I am a general assignment reporter whose beats include Yale University, religion, transportation, medicine, science and the environment.

I grew up in the New Haven area and have lived here most of my life. I received my journalism degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and earned a master’s degree in religious studies from Sacred Heart University. I have been an editor at the New Haven Register and at the Episcopal Church’s national newspaper.